Manhunt for Bombers Focuses on Two Men

The faces of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects came into fuzzy view Thursday as the Federal Bureau of Investigation released photos and videos of two men carrying backpacks near the scene of the deadly attacks.

ENLARGE

The FBI urged anyone with information on the above suspects in the Boston bombing to call 1-800-CALL-FBI.
Federal Bureau of Investigation

The FBI, seeking a quick resolution to one of the nation's biggest terror attacks since Sept. 11, 2001, urged the public to come forward with tips about the two men, who were described as the principal focus of the investigation. The two were seen together and then separately, with one putting a bag down at the spot where the second of two blasts went off Monday, the FBI said. The bombs killed three people and injured more than 175.

FBI Releases Photos of Suspects

Richard DesLauriers, chief of the FBI's Boston office, said people should consider the men "armed and extremely dangerous." He added, "No one should approach them, no one should attempt to apprehend them except law enforcement."

The release of the videos and photos reflects both significant progress in the investigation—finding the images amid hundreds of hours of surveillance-camera and other video—and an acknowledgment that the high-tech tools at the FBI's disposal weren't enough to immediately identify the two men.

Dan Defenbaugh, a former FBI investigator who worked on the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, said the public labeling of the men as suspects means "it's obvious now that the FBI and the joint terrorism task force needs everyone's help in identifying, finding and locating these people."

"You want to come up with these guys, and you want to come up with them real fast," Mr. Defenbaugh said. "It's not like waiting for the bank robber to rob his next bank.''

The man described as suspect No. 1 was wearing a black golf cap. Suspect No. 2 was wearing a white cap on backward and seen dropping a bag near a restaurant on Boylston Street, the thoroughfare where the Boston Marathon finish line was located Monday. Within minutes the bag's contents exploded, Mr. DesLauriers said.

Boston, Obama Honor Bombing Victims

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama attended the interfaith service at Boston's Cathedral of the Holy Cross. Brian Snyderr/Reuters

The release of the pictures came after President Barack Obama visited Boston for a prayer service at the city's Cathedral of the Holy Cross and promised to find who carried out the bombings.

To a standing ovation, he said the city showed resilience after the attacks and would continue to show its resolve by holding next year's marathon.

"We carry on. We finish the race," Mr. Obama said.

Video

The FBI releases a surveillance video containing two people who appear to leave a bag where one of two bombs exploded. Video: FBI.

The FBI released images of two individuals suspected of involvement in Monday's bombings at the Boston Marathon.

Investigators say the two bombs were assembled using household pressure cookers, similar to devices thwarted in several prior U.S. terror plots. The bombs were packed with nails and pellets to make them more deadly and placed in black bags or backpacks, the FBI has said.

The FBI's use of the "suspect" label Thursday came as something of a surprise after days of officials urging the news media to exercise caution in speculating about perpetrators. Earlier, officials had said only that the FBI wanted to talk with some of the people in the videos.

Immediately after the announcement, the FBI.gov website received more traffic than it has ever seen, an official said, as well as a "sizable" jump in calls to their tip line. The FBI set up a new site, bostonmarathontips.fbi.gov, to report tips.

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"This is not an 'NCIS' episode," said Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano at a congressional hearing, speaking of the popular TV series. "Sometimes you have to take time to properly put the chain together to identify the perpetrators."

Within 48 hours of the attack, FBI and Boston police investigators began homing in on video and photos from the scene and trying to identify a person in a video who appeared to leave the bag at the spot of the second bomb.

Explosions Rock Boston

Mr. DesLauriers said investigators became persuaded Wednesday that this man—the one with the backward white cap—was a suspect. Further reviews of the videos led them to conclude Thursday that the man with the black cap was with him and a suspect.

Investigators said the men were recorded walking on Boylston Street and they encouraged anyone who had been at the Forum Restaurant, near the second blast site, to contact the FBI in the hopes they might be able to provide even a small scrap of new information that would help them find the men.

"For more than 100 years the FBI has relied on the public to be its eyes and ears. We know the public will play a critical role in identifying and locating these individuals," Mr. DesLauriers said.

Jim Albers of MorphoTrust USA Inc., a company that supplies facial-recognition software to U.S. agencies, said the FBI likely tried running the images through photo databases and didn't get a match. "Then you need to seek the public's help," he said.

While the FBI conveyed little doubt that it thought it had zeroed in on the suspects, initial leads in earlier investigations have sometimes failed to pan out. In the 2010 failed bombing in Times Square, investigators urged the public to help identify a person wearing a red shirt who was seen in a video leaving the scene. However, that person never was branded a suspect and later proved to have nothing to do with the incident.

Three people were killed in the blasts: Lu Lingzi, a Boston University graduate student from China, 8-year-old Martin Richard and 29-year-old Krystle Campbell, a restaurant manager from Medford, Mass.

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